ICRC: 8 000 flee Nigeria violence
2010-03-10 22:28
Geneva - About 8 000 Nigerians have fled their homes around the troubled city of Jos following new sectarian attacks there over the weekend, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday.
"The Nigerian Red Cross Society is distributing food and water to about 5 000 displaced people (IDPs) who have taken refuge in various police stations in the area and to about 300 detainees," the ICRC said in a statement.
"An additional 3 000 people have fled from Jos to camps in the neighbouring state of Bauchi," it added.
The commissioner in the state of Plateau said on Wednesday that 109 people were killed in the attacks on Sunday morning in three Christian villages just outside Jos carried out by members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group.
The ICRC said Nigerian Red Cross volunteers evacuated 28 injured persons to Jos University Teaching Hospital and gave first aid to 137 wounded detainees at the city's police headquarters.
Several hundreds of people were killed in Christian-Muslim clashes around Jos in January.
Another 3 800 people displaced by clashes in January are still being sheltered in Bauchi, the ICRC said.
Thousands have died in ethnic strife in recent years in Jos, which lies on the dividing line between Nigeria's mainly Muslim north and Christian-dominated south.
Residents have said the killings on Sunday were part of a spiralling feud between the Fulani, who are nomadic herders, and the rival Berom clan, who are farmers, which was sparked by the theft of cattle.